Advice For Democratic Candidates From A Recovering Republican Operative

September seems so long ago and our brief discussion of former GOP operative Mike Lofgren was buried in a post about then seemingly formidable GOP presidential candidate Rick Perry. Perry is buried now, his "campaign" event Monday hosting Rovnag Abdullayev from Azerbaijan's state (i.e, socialist) oil company. Lofgren, on the other hand, is very much alive-- this time with some formidable advise for The Democrats. His interview this week at Truthout is provocatively titled I Know How To Beat Republicans. He was a GOP congressional staffer and he does. But first Democrats need to do a little self-examination:

The problem is that, for years, liberals coasted on the coattails of FDR, got very complacent and generated no new ideas. So, when the GOP came to the waterhole and stole their clothes, they didn't know what to do; they thought they had hegemony. Group one retreated to the ivory tower: effete crybabies, they became useless politically. Group two, the Democratic Leadership Council (DLC), became GOP-lite and a pure fundraising operation... [Obama] slid in as a center-right president who pretty much followed George Bush in everything.

And who knows what his present new rhetoric portends, whether it actually means anything. And even so, it's awfully late in the game. He's not going to score any touchdowns now.
 
It's all money-driven for both sides now - and until you get the dollars out of politics, it's not going to end. Karl Rove's one political action committee (PAC) is going to raise $250 million dollars. [Washington Post columnist] George Will says it's all free speech and that more is spent on potato chips than campaign advertising. Well, a quarter of a billion dollars is a lot of potato chips. There needs to be a complete ban on corporate contributions.

...I know how to beat Republicans. Progressives do not know how to beat Republicans. You have to stick with a simple theme and keep pushing it.
 
The Occupy Wall Street movement was studiously ignored until the police in New York City started using violence and now it's gone viral, so you need to seize the moment, not have too many mixed messages, because that is just not going to play with Joe Average. If you're underwater with your mortgage, you understand the Wall Street thing. That was the whole point of the GOP: "Our propaganda has to be simple and repetitive."
 
People who are not authoritarian by nature are not going to march to the beat of the same drummer, but it's tricky. It can't be identical in style to the GOP-- which is now directly appealing to irrational impulses-- so there is a natural tension between keeping the message simple and not insulting the intelligence of an educated person, as so much of the GOP's recent messaging does.